nately live my life an exceptional creature; an unhappy
variety of the species. At first your silence wounded me deeply; I
thought, a friend ought not to make us suffer so keenly for what is not
our fault. Afterwards I saw that you were right to act as the heavenly
powers:

"'Then leave him to his punishment,
Vengeance for ev'ry earthly sin is sent.'

"You remember the reading? 'the sins of the parents upon the children
unto the third and fourth generations'?"

He stood still. "I don't understand a single word you're saying, my
dear friend. What? You sent by Balder--but do you not know that the
conversation he had with you, or rather with the count, was the last
that he ever held? And you told him--what? What, for God's sake?"

He had seized her hand and pressed it violently. "Toinette, speak, tell
me all. What is done and cannot be undone will at least be more
endurable if it is purged of all which the rude hand of malicious
chance may have mingled with it. You've misunderstood me; I now learn
this for the first time, and I have also misunderstood you. Speak,
speak--what thread did death sever, that would have guided us out of
the labyrinth into the right path?"

She shook her head. "Who knows? even if my message had reached you, you
would not have solved the problem! Of what use would it be? Can a heart
incapable of love become more lovable if you learn that it has very
natural reasons for being contrary to nature? A whim, a fit of
obstinacy, a childish caprice--a refractory character like Katharine
the shrew is not hopeless, since we need not once for all make a cross
against it and go our way. But the child of a forced love, the fruit of
a girl's bartered life--what can be hoped for, what aid can avail in
such a case?"

"And this--this is what I should have learned if my poor Balder had
survived that day. Oh! eternal Gods!"

"Yes indeed," she nodded with a bitter smile. "I thought you would have
taken pity on the poor monster and have borne with her for a time. I
hoped so for three days. Then, as I said, I thought: 'he's right'--and
came here with the old countess."

"Horrible!" he exclaimed, wiping his brow, on which drops of cold
perspiration were standing. "And so I--none other than myself--blind
and unsuspecting as I was--and your letter, which I did not
understand--the three days respite--"

"Calm yourself, my friend. It's not your fault; the threads of fate
were too delicatel